No matter what kind of game you find yourself in, no matter how good or bad the luck, you can change your life completely with a single thought or a single act of love.— Gregory David Roberts, author of Shantaram, a novel.

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Where Have I Been & What’s Coming

I think for us to get American personnel involved in a civil war inside Iraq would literally be a quagmire. Once we got to Baghdad, what would we do? Who would we put in power? What kind of government would we have?—— Dick Cheney, ABC’s This Week, in 1991.

Well, I guess know we see what we’re doing and what we’ve got and it ain’t good.

I’m no fan of Don Imus but I find it ironic that he gets fired for racist comments (they were offensive) but George W. Bush doesn’t get fired for sending good men and women over to Iraq to get them killed because of his shadow agenda.

It’s too bad we just couldn’t pull his advertising and fire him and Dick Cheney.

In the meantime, Global Warming and climate upset all over the world because of our thoughtless pollution of the ecosphere we live in continues at an unabated pace.

This weekend, on April 14th is Step It Up day and there are individual marches all over to protest what we have become and to make more people aware that we can change our path. See stepitup2007.org to see what local actions are taking place in your area.

In Boston there will be a One Earth, One Climate Rally from 2pm to 4pm on April 14th. Marches from all over the area will congregate there, but if you can’t walk or bicycle, take the MBTA.

There are marches beginning at 11am in Jamaica Plain, a conference in Roxbury beginning at 8am at Roxbury Community College, a demonstration in Everett Square from 11am to 2pm, a bicycle tour starting at the Coolidge Corner Library in Brookline at 9am to 11am, and a massive Massachusetts Avenue March starting at 11am in Davis Square culminating at the Rally in Boston later.

This is what’s going on in my area. Please go to stepitup2007.org to see what is going on where you live.

And if there’s nothing happening, start something.

I’m doing a poetry reading at 12:40pm at the Boston Public Library and I’m going to dedicate it to the Step It Up folks. There’ll be poetry going on all day there, from 10pm to 5pm on Saturday, and on Sunday from 1pm to 5pm with an open mike sometime Sunday afternoon.

So if you want to start with poetry downtown and then shoot for the Rally on the Boston Common from 2pm to 4pm, you can have it all.

By the way, no matter what kind of weather you’ve been having, the fact is that this has been the warmest winter in the 125 years that we’ve been keeping records.

Step It Up was started by Bill McKibben, who is the author of The End of Nature. It all began where he teaches at the Middlebury College near Burlington Vermont.

According to the Boston Globe on Thursday, April 12, some of the effects of global warming will be the death of dolphins in the Mediterranean, the extinction of some plants in the Alps and a deluge of heat waves across the European continent. Do you remember reading about the heat wave in Europe in 2003 that killed tens of thousands and did immense crop damage? Just the beginning if we don’t do something about it.

We need to stop fighting and take a look around us. While we ravage each other because of whatever, the world we live in is degrading because of us.

I’d like to get to this blog more often and I cry your pardon, I’ll be trying.

Hope to see you folks somewhere on a healthy planet called Earth. Let’s make it happen.